![]() You are emphatically WRONG:Īlso look at some historical maps to see you are wrong about the development patterns of the day: Go read some peer reviewed published literature. PEOPLE WHO ARE OBSERVING THIS ARGUMENT: DO NOT FALL FOR PEOPLE WHO CANNOT BRING PRIMARY SOURCE MATERIAL AND RESEARCH TO THE TABLE. It's one of the main reasons that a large, desirable urban area like the Bay Area has an underdeveloped and disjointed public transit system, and not enough housing. People need to join forces, instead of this current situation where every urban area is comprised of 1,000 little fiefdoms that are looking out for themselves, with no regard for their neighbors. There's just way too much civic balkanization in America. You can take a walk through all of these cities, often passing from one back into the other, and then back into the first one again, and have no idea you entered a "different city". They share the same street grid, density levels, architecture, utilities, and public transit systems. Oakland and Berkeley (and Emeryville, and Piedmont) are indistinguishable, aside from the color of the street signs. I can agree with this, except for the Berkeley part. Even Flushing Queens is a bit of a distance from NYC limits. Berkeley seems to big to be an edge neighborhood and is pretty distinct. ![]() I would end things at San Bruno after a quick look at sat images.Īs for East Bay additions, I would add Oakland, Alameda, Emeryville and Piedmont. There are no local city schools.Īlmost agreed. The schools are run at the county level as well. ![]() Local cities control zoning, planning, code enforcement and the like but the County can over-rule local zoning in some cases for example any development within a certain distance of a county transit station (metrorail, metromover, busway) can basically ignore any local zoning restrictions and be subject to only the County's restrictions. Or some will have local police that handle smaller matters but the County PD chips in for major cases. There are 36 little municipalities in the county and many contract with the County of fire/emergency services. in Miami-Dade County/Miami's case, things like Transit, Water/Sewer, Street lights, most roads.etc are maintained by the County. Counties (which are large) control a large part of the local day to day governance. I also think that a city that encompassed the whole Bay Area would lead to reduced accountability and to voters feeling that the city is not responsive to their concerns.įlorida is similar. Any increased efficiency I think would be more than offset by increased levels of bureaucracy. So I'm not sure how much there is to be gained from the creation of a super-Bay Area city. On top of this, the State of California has taken steps to reduce local control over zoning, so individual cities are finding it harder to avoid state directives to zone for more housing. So there is already a fair bit of government oversight at the metropolitan level. Many large urban counties also have county-wide transit authorities who allocate revenues from voter-approved tax measures. And in many counties, individual cities, especially smaller ones, will contract with the county to provide police and fire protection. In California public health and welfare are already the responsibility of the county, not individual cities. Smaller cities also tend to be less bureaucratic. I think it's mostly an accountability issue: in a smaller city voters know who their local council person is so they know who to complain to when the city is falling down on the job. The City of LA actually has quite robust resources, especially since it gets revenues from the Port of LA and the airports. And this isn't necessarily an issue of poor central city and rich suburbs. Streets in the suburbs are better maintained, there are fewer billboards, and code enforcement seems to work better because fewer areas appear run down and untidy. Looking at LA County, the suburbs tend to do a better job of providing a higher quality of services for residents than does the immense City of LA. Metropolitan-level government can serve a useful purpose, especially in metros that have numerous small suburbs, or in metros where there is a history of antagonism between central cities and suburbs (Detroit, for example?).
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